Kashmir

Fragile hope

Hordes of tourists, and the return of some former militants, reflect cautious optimism in a disputed region

MR DELICIOUS, a floating purveyor of macaroons and other confectionery, bobs on Dal Lake at dawn. The business is thriving; his sweet-toothed customers include other traders, their narrow wooden vessels laden with flat bread or tourists. Even in November, well after the usual season, Kashmir’s tourist spots are heaving.

Flights are packed to Srinagar, the bustling summer capital of the disputed, Muslim-majority territory, some 880 km (550 miles) north of Delhi. A construction boom is under way. Tailors, handicraft-makers and hoteliers call it their most lucrative year in recent memory. Guides talk cheerily of the British government this month lifting its advice against visiting.

By day soldiers and police have cleared their old barricades from the streets. New hotels and coffee shops are opening. Guffawing tourists play in the snow at the ski resort in Gulmarg. Officials last year trumpeted news that over 1m visitors (mostly Indian) had gone to Kashmir. That was a sharp rise on previous tallies and proof, just possibly, of growing stability.

Yet any firm judgment would be premature. Two decades of violence, repression, terrorism and protest led to the deaths of around 50,000 people. Many more were displaced, including Kashmiri Pandits, local Hindus who were mostly forced away. Bitterness runs deep, notably over mass graves containing thousands of unidentified bodies—officials claim they were Pakistani militant infiltrators killed in battle; furious residents retort that many, in fact, are murdered local Kashmiris, and demand DNA tests to prove it.

Thus any stability feels tentative. For three successive summers to 2010, stone-throwing protesters in Srinagar and nearby towns brought life to a halt as they demanded azadi (freedom) from India. The state government of Jammu and Kashmir, led by an inexperienced chief minister, Omar Abdullah, flailed in response. Ill-trained police shot dead over 110 protesters in 2010 alone; local prisons filled. Curfews enforced by separatists curtailed business.

Sceptics warn that violence in Kashmir has always come in cycles: aggrieved locals (and militants) may be pausing to rebuild their finances. Worryingly, more conservative forms of Islam may be creeping in, helped by Saudi money, squeezing the broadly tolerant local form of Sufism.

Kashmir’s fortunes are much influenced by outsiders. Most dangerous would be if the relatively sweet India-Pakistan relations of today were to sour. Then Pakistan’s spies might once again allow terrorist proxies, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, to grow active across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir. Looming changes in nearby Afghanistan threaten uncertainty: Islamist military groups operating there, if they grow emboldened, could yet turn their attention to Kashmir.

Thus 2012 marks a prosperous moment—the tourist tally this year has passed 1.3m. But, as Mr Abdullah warned on November 20th, a tourism boom does not mean the “main issue” has been solved. Kashmir’s constitutional status in India is still disputed, and the status of Pakistani-occupied Kashmir is unclear. A ponderous independent review of Kashmir’s prospects, ordered two years ago by Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, was at last published this year, but it was ignored. Local politicians are despised, and separatist leaders kept under house arrest. And even limited promises of reform go unfulfilled, such as a pledge by Mr Abdullah to lift a law that lets soldiers operate with legal impunity. The law remains in place.

His popularity will be tested at the next state election, about two years from now. Yet the fact that polls could even take place is encouraging. So, too, is the return of former militants, men who crossed to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, in the 1990s to be trained for their fight back home. Two decades on, a trickle is flowing back, cautiously encouraged by India’s authorities.

A sort of homecoming

Typical is Jahangir Bhat, now camped with his family in a small room in Srinagar. He says he left the city in 1990, aged 14, expecting to be away for “15 days or so” until Kashmir won independence. After a brief military career he became a relatively prosperous craftsman. He at last decided to head home this April after India’s rulers said it was safe to return. “If I had come back earlier I would have been killed,” he explains. “India’s policy has changed.”

Our interactive map demonstrates how the territorial claims of India, Pakistan and China would change the shape of South Asia

Mr Bhat says as many as 170 families have crossed back in the past three years, and 6,000 more people are waiting to come. Indian officials suggest hundreds in Muzaffarabad have applied, though Pakistani officials are in no rush to help. Hosting camps of Indian Kashmiri refugees has helped Pakistan draw international attention to the dispute.

How many more return depends in part on the fate of those now in Srinagar. Mr Bhat says he has no regrets, though his Muzaffarabad-born wife says she struggles—she is unable to get work and finds Indian-Kashmiris to be a materialistic and closed-minded lot.

In Budgam, near Srinagar, those who have returned are more embittered. One, Jameel Ahmad Mir, admits he was drawn by India’s growing prosperity. He came back this year after 22 years on the Pakistani side because he saw India’s economy growing: “we thought we’d get a better life”. He says that he and his family have been betrayed as they struggle to make a living or get children into schools. Worst of all, he says, pledges of jobs and financial help from Mr Abdullah and his officials have proved as substantial as the mist wafting over Dal Lake.